A House Rep.’s secret daughter was revealed in an unusual way during the State Of The Union address this week, and a story that began with a congressman exchanging affectionate tweets with a bikini model turned out far differently than one might expect given what it looked like.

Headlines about the Rep.’s secret daughter seemed to suggest a John Edwards and Rielle Hunter love child situation — but the reality and Rep. Steve Cohen’s explanation put a rather sweet spin on what we would all imagine was a story of subterfuge, philandering … and bikini models.

The Rep.’s secret daughter first came to Twitter’s attention when, during President Obama’s address this week, some tweets from Cohen (now deleted) were spied by constituents and politics geeks and caused some curiosity.

As we initially reported after the State Of The Union, Cohen tweeted to a young model during the big deal politics brouhaha, saying:

“nice to know you were watchin SOTU (state of the union). Happy Valentines beautiful girl. ilu.”

The Rep.’s secret daughter was initially explained away as a friend’s kid, but under a tiny bit of scrutiny, Cohen admitted:

“When [the Rep.’s secret daughter via Twitter] let me know she was watching the State of the Union address I was thrilled that she wanted Steve Cohen to be part of her. I had such joy, that I couldn’t hold back from tweeting her.”

By way of explanation, he said:

“I googled her mother, found out she had a child and the math looked pretty accurate … The mom told me we had a lot of catching up to do.”

As it appears, Rep. Cohen’s biggest sin here was googling an ex — and later the congressman dished to Luke Russert about his long-lost child:

Cohen was emotional while telling the story about his daughter, fought back tears, could feel genuine fatherly emotion.